"Cliched Trash"

[Zedar]

The more I read of these forums, the more I wonder about the so called cliche riddled rubbish that is so much derided here. I honestly can't remember the last non-dragonlance book I read that had elves or dwarves in it (ok apart from Eragon, which isn't so much of a LotR ripoff as a Star Wars ripoff). Are books like this actually still being published, or are a lot of people here still dwelling on Terry Brooks flashbacks, and unwilling to see the current state of the fantasy market? Or am I just subconsciously ignoring all of these books in my local bookstore and only noticing the ones I'm interested in?

I also tend to resent the suggestion that anything with elves, dwarves, a quest or a group of companions must be a blatant Tolkien ripoff. If you remove quests, fantastic races and friendship I really don't think there'd be much of a novel left. I suspect that a lot of books appear to be "Tolkien Clones" simply because they are using plot elements that are going to make a novel exciting, which just happen to be ones that Tolkien put to good use a long time ago.

Sorry if I'm ranting a bit here, but the elitism I see in a lot of this forum really annoys me sometimes. I really love some of the so called cliched books out there, such as the Belgariad (quest, friend, no elves or dwarves), the Riftwar (elves, dwarves, no quest as such) and the Dragonlance books (elves, dwarves, quests AND companions, but honestly not much like LotR at all except in the most superficial sense).

[ThornofCamorr]

Ive wondered the same thing myself, but usually just assume that the cliche's must reside in those shelves of books with Wheel-of-Time-looking covers that I usually don't look at. The only books I've read that were reminiscent of LotR was Jaquelyn Carey's Banewreaker and Godslayer, and thats kind of on purpose. Anyone want to list the Tolkien-esque books they know of that everyone's always complaining about?

[ChrisW]

there's a thread around here somewhere that touchs on the cliche thing. The thing is cliches only bother people when they don't like the writing. KatG says it better but that's the gist of it.

And yes, there is a fair bit of elitism here. It's been worse though.

[JamesL]

Scott Lynch wrote an interesting article on fantasy cliches recently. The general gist of his argument was that it is not the cliches that are the problem, but the way they are used. When writers use the usual cliches (farmboy hero, dark lord, etc) in the standard way, things get a bit dull. The best approach is to take the usual tropes and play around with them a bit.

I don't mean that everyone needs to do this to the same extent as Joe Abercrombie. Take Gail Z. Martin for example. She's written a book about a prince that realises he has magical powers that he needs to use to overthrow his evil brother. So far, so standard. But the twist is that the heroic protagonist is a necromancer - a character usually portrayed as being evil. A minor twist that Martin uses very effectively.

Personally I grew up reading quest stories and still enjoy reading them, although there needs to be some degree of innovation to keep things fresh. In Gail Z. Martin's second novel the formula reverts to type too much and subsequently I found the book dull at times. I have no problem with so-called 'elitist' views. If certain readers look down on traditional quest novels, then that's fine. It certainly doesn't represent a backlash against the quest sub-genre by any means.

[Ko-jah]

sword of shannara was one of the more blatant tolkien clones, i believe.

mythical creatures, exotic places, mystical items, good and evil, love and friendship, quests, heroes, villains and companions - i've seen all this and more referred to as cliche! cliche! cliche!
are we confusing cliches with the fundamentals?

[Zedar]

I think you've hit on it there, Ko-jah. In my opinion the so called cliches are the fundamentals of the fantasy genre. Every genre has certain staples that define it, which make the books what they are. Is every mystery novel with a murder and an investigator unreadable cliched rubbish? Was Agatha Christie Terry Brooks to Arthur Conan Doyle's JRR Tolkien? I think not.

In my opinion, some people need to get past the idea that "overused cliches" make a bad book, and instead assess them on their own merits.

[Sfinx]

there's a thread around here somewhere that touchs on the cliche thing. The thing is cliches only bother people when they don't like the writing. And yes, there is a fair bit of elitism here. It's been worse though.

I can recommend: Cliche book title contest.

But, as stated above, it is not so much the cliche elements (because imo there's only a limited number of 'key ingredients' to a story that really engage us) but how they're put to use. Plus, i don't necessarily equate 'making fun of' to 'elitism'. Ofc, there is always an element of 'showing off' / 'look at what i read' / 'this is what I think!'. If we wouldn't have that this forum would not exist - or in a fairly miniscule form. Hence, not too bothered by it. Just need to aware we do not make it personal: "because you read a book i do not like I do not like you" or similar silly stuff. Other than that, all authors / books are fair game

[Alex]

I think Chris was refering to the monster thread:

http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showt...highlight=alex

There we discuss quite thoroughly (or however you spell it) where authors get their influences from and what a "copycat" is=)

As for Gail Martin.... Well... Stereotypical characters can work but I find it mindnumbingly boringwhen I can guess the entire outcome of a series after reading the cover of the book. Let's see if my "scrying" for The summoner will be right (reading it right now):

Prince with latent power and an evil brother will loose 1-2 friends on his way to reclaim his throne from his evil brother and his evil mage. He will naturally save and get the princess aswell and by the end of the series he will have almost godlike powers.

The fact that he is a necromancer doesn't do a thing for me. That doesn't make him a "greyish" protaonist in the sense of black/white charactarisation. He is purely a good guy with incredible powers.

Stereotypical fantasy can indeed be pulled of and I think Greg Keyes is a good example of this, he manages to come up with some nice plot twisting and characterisation.

The thing is cliches only bother people when they don't like the writing.

That was nicely put and that's prolly the reason why I wont buy Gail Martins 2nd book=)

[Wulfa_Jones]

[QUOTE=Ko-jah;469009]sword of shannara was one of the more blatant tolkien clones, i believe.[QUOTE]

So very true, I couldn't believe when I started reading the book that the Tolkein estate didn't sue!

It is also true, that many of the "popular" titles do seem to have dispelled with what is considered to be the fundamentals of fantasy. However, these fundamentals of fantasy are surely, to a point, Tolkien’s creation. There where fantasy books before The Hobbit and these didn’t necessarily involve a quest or fantasy creatures.

Some authors still use many of these fundamentals, but just mix it up a little bit. I think the over-blown fantasy epics of the late 70s and early 80s over used these ideas and the new authors who are writing now where readers back then - so maybe it is a case of them trying new ideas within the genre.

It has been a long while since I have read a book that has both Dwarves and Elves in it, (I’ve come across Elves a few times though) and I can’t even recall the last book I read that had Orcs or Tolkienesqe Goblins. Magic is still used heavily and books often contain quests, but only as a segment of a greater story.

I do sometimes consider going for something like Dragonlace or Forgotten realms when I become disenchanted with the grand fantasy opuses of the moment.

[Cranky Hamster]

Like pretty much everyone else who's posted on this thread, I don't have a problem with elves or dwarves or quests in and of themselves. It is the case that most writers who use those tropes do it poorly, and when there are too many points scored on Cliche Bingo it's likely that the telltale signs of unoriginality are going to be borne out by a crappy story, but the elements by themselves don't mean that.

Here's my analogy: let's say that one day an enterprising chef invents cake. It's a straight-up vanilla white cake, but it is the world's first cake, and so everyone is all "ooh cake! this is wonderful! this is delicious! this enables Eddie Izzard bits!" All the other chefs rush out there and also make cakes, because there is now a huge burgeoning cake market, but early on everyone's just trying to learn the basic recipe, so they all make vanilla cakes.

And it gets to the point where people are all hung over on sugar and broccoli is starting to look really excellent as a change of pace.

And then some enterprising young rebel thinks "but what if I take some of this chocolate and put it in the cake!!!" and meanwhile some other guy is thinking "what if I take some of this fudge and add a little more powdered sugar and.... I think I will call it 'frosting.' Brilliant!" and the cake market continues, broadening and diversifying. A few people still like vanilla for the sake of nostalgia but most of the original fans are past that.

Eventually you get to the present day: there are green tea cakes, hummingbird cakes, red velvet cakes (with ongoing flame wars over whether cream cheese or roux frostings are the "correct" complement), and the occasional old-fashioned vanilla cake, sometimes tricked up and sometimes not. Meanwhile, the original knockoff vanilla cakes have gotten so stale in the intervening decades that many people can't understand what was ever appealing about them at all, while old fogies are all "oh but they used to be so much better back in the day" and the kids are like "uh-huh, well, looks pretty gross to me."

Now, the point of this incredibly long belabored analogy (besides amusing myself) is this: it is quite likely, speaking as a chef, that someone who is making vanilla cakes is doing that because they are still learning the basics. In fact they may even be using a box cake mix (read: writing Extruded Fantasy Product), which discriminating tastes abhor but 12-year-olds (and spiritual 12-year-olds) unabashedly love. Meanwhile, people who have already mastered their craft may occasionally return to produce a truly stunning jewel of a vanilla cake (see also: GRRM), but more likely than not they're going to be off experimenting with whether ancho chilies, orange zest, and chocolate can be combined to good effect (or, if you prefer, writing squidpunk).

So it becomes very easy to say "someone making vanilla cakes is only doing that because he isn't good enough to do anything better," whether or not that's true in the individual case, because as a general matter it very often is.

[DailyAlice]

Um, the above post? Amused me too.

Well done!

[Andols]

Like pretty much everyone else who's posted on this thread, I don't have a problem with elves or dwarves or quests in and of themselves. It is the case that most writers who use those tropes do it poorly, and when there are too many points scored on Cliche Bingo it's likely that the telltale signs of unoriginality are going to be borne out by a crappy story, but the elements by themselves don't mean that.

Here's my analogy: let's say that one day an enterprising chef invents cake. It's a straight-up vanilla white cake, but it is the world's first cake, and so everyone is all "ooh cake! this is wonderful! this is delicious! this enables Eddie Izzard bits!" All the other chefs rush out there and also make cakes, because there is now a huge burgeoning cake market, but early on everyone's just trying to learn the basic recipe, so they all make vanilla cakes.

And it gets to the point where people are all hung over on sugar and broccoli is starting to look really excellent as a change of pace.

And then some enterprising young rebel thinks "but what if I take some of this chocolate and put it in the cake!!!" and meanwhile some other guy is thinking "what if I take some of this fudge and add a little more powdered sugar and.... I think I will call it 'frosting.' Brilliant!" and the cake market continues, broadening and diversifying. A few people still like vanilla for the sake of nostalgia but most of the original fans are past that.

Eventually you get to the present day: there are green tea cakes, hummingbird cakes, red velvet cakes (with ongoing flame wars over whether cream cheese or roux frostings are the "correct" complement), and the occasional old-fashioned vanilla cake, sometimes tricked up and sometimes not. Meanwhile, the original knockoff vanilla cakes have gotten so stale in the intervening decades that many people can't understand what was ever appealing about them at all, while old fogies are all "oh but they used to be so much better back in the day" and the kids are like "uh-huh, well, looks pretty gross to me."

Now, the point of this incredibly long belabored analogy (besides amusing myself) is this: it is quite likely, speaking as a chef, that someone who is making vanilla cakes is doing that because they are still learning the basics. In fact they may even be using a box cake mix (read: writing Extruded Fantasy Product), which discriminating tastes abhor but 12-year-olds (and spiritual 12-year-olds) unabashedly love. Meanwhile, people who have already mastered their craft may occasionally return to produce a truly stunning jewel of a vanilla cake (see also: GRRM), but more likely than not they're going to be off experimenting with whether ancho chilies, orange zest, and chocolate can be combined to good effect (or, if you prefer, writing squidpunk).

So it becomes very easy to say "someone making vanilla cakes is only doing that because he isn't good enough to do anything better," whether or not that's true in the individual case, because as a general matter it very often is.

This is the most delicious analogy of all time.

[Severn]

Yeah great, it's 2am and I want cake. I don't even like cake much...

If a cliche is used well I'm fine with it. If it's not, then I'm not. Not elitism. Just like good writing.

Short and sweet. Like cake...mmmmmmmmmmmm

[Radone]

Like pretty much everyone else who's posted on this thread, I don't have a problem with elves or dwarves or quests in and of themselves. It is the case that most writers who use those tropes do it poorly, and when there are too many points scored on Cliche Bingo it's likely that the telltale signs of unoriginality are going to be borne out by a crappy story, but the elements by themselves don't mean that.

Here's my analogy: let's say that one day an enterprising chef invents cake. It's a straight-up vanilla white cake, but it is the world's first cake, and so everyone is all "ooh cake! this is wonderful! this is delicious! this enables Eddie Izzard bits!" All the other chefs rush out there and also make cakes, because there is now a huge burgeoning cake market, but early on everyone's just trying to learn the basic recipe, so they all make vanilla cakes.

And it gets to the point where people are all hung over on sugar and broccoli is starting to look really excellent as a change of pace.

And then some enterprising young rebel thinks "but what if I take some of this chocolate and put it in the cake!!!" and meanwhile some other guy is thinking "what if I take some of this fudge and add a little more powdered sugar and.... I think I will call it 'frosting.' Brilliant!" and the cake market continues, broadening and diversifying. A few people still like vanilla for the sake of nostalgia but most of the original fans are past that.

Eventually you get to the present day: there are green tea cakes, hummingbird cakes, red velvet cakes (with ongoing flame wars over whether cream cheese or roux frostings are the "correct" complement), and the occasional old-fashioned vanilla cake, sometimes tricked up and sometimes not. Meanwhile, the original knockoff vanilla cakes have gotten so stale in the intervening decades that many people can't understand what was ever appealing about them at all, while old fogies are all "oh but they used to be so much better back in the day" and the kids are like "uh-huh, well, looks pretty gross to me."

Now, the point of this incredibly long belabored analogy (besides amusing myself) is this: it is quite likely, speaking as a chef, that someone who is making vanilla cakes is doing that because they are still learning the basics. In fact they may even be using a box cake mix (read: writing Extruded Fantasy Product), which discriminating tastes abhor but 12-year-olds (and spiritual 12-year-olds) unabashedly love. Meanwhile, people who have already mastered their craft may occasionally return to produce a truly stunning jewel of a vanilla cake (see also: GRRM), but more likely than not they're going to be off experimenting with whether ancho chilies, orange zest, and chocolate can be combined to good effect (or, if you prefer, writing squidpunk).

So it becomes very easy to say "someone making vanilla cakes is only doing that because he isn't good enough to do anything better," whether or not that's true in the individual case, because as a general matter it very often is.

The above analogy only holds if we think that 'quest' fantasy is vanilla cake and that the over-turn-the-tropes fantasy is the more inventive cake. I don't believe that's the case at all. It is true that the original vanilla cake could be said to be Tolkien, if we want to use that analogy. But many here, who know the history of fantasy much better than I, will also point out that fantasy existed well before Tolkien. He used certain tropes and they became popular. Many clones were written as a result. Hence, the false sense that this was vanilla and non-experimental.
However, the current glut of dark/gritty/flavor of the moment that's considered so original are drawing from a different set and sometimes the same set of cliches. The writing techniques and themes, though, such as vivid, almost dreamlike writing; incredibly dense and well-described scenes; imaginative, almost lurid compositions; or dark and atmospheric books with gray characters - all of that has been done before, from E.R. Edison to Peake to Moorcock to Delany. It's only now, in the past 5-10 years, that the worm was turned back to these type of books. But, the point still remains that the experimentation that's considered so new and fresh was dated from the moment pen hit paper.
I noticed that the dark/gritty (I'm using that term as a catch-all for all the new fantasy that's considered wildly divergent from Tolkienesque) had already become a cliche about 3-4 years ago. Hence, poorly received books that claimed to out-dark the darkest works, such as Brian Ruckley and David Keck. I have a theory that in another 5 years, when amnesia sets in, or when new readers, who haven't read the stuff from the 70's and 80's, come along, they'll complain about repetitive grim, drab worlds full of gray characters and conflicts. Then, a very well written Tolkienesque fantasy will come along, and seem like a burst of happy sunshince. All that was old and tired will be fresh and new and vice versa.

[catsrule1]

The only criteria I use to judge a book are how well the book is written and how enjoyable it is to read. There are almost no original ideas recently in literature, or at least they are rare. To suggest that a book is a Tolkein ripoff because it has elements of elves, dwarves, and a quest in it - would be similar to saying a book about a trip to the moon is a ripoff of Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. They are simply extrapolations from good literary ideas. Some are well written and readable, some are not.